You probably already know that you can get more frequent updates on the development of new versions by following b2evolution on twitter... (If you don't know about twitter yet, it's a social network that let's you follow updates about your friends and other stuff you care about... like b2evolution.)

b2evolution is now also on Facebook. Please show your support and become a Fan of the new b2evolution page on Facebook. Fans will receive exclusive sneak peeks to upcoming features. (A neat side benefit of joining us on Facebook, is that you will actually see the true faces of many of the members on the forums! )

And last but not least, Scott from the b2evolution team has applied for the "Best Job in the World" where Tourism Queensland is looking to hire someone to be "caretaker" of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef. There are many applicants, but only one successful candidate will get to live on Hamilton Island for six-months and spend his time exploring the other Great Barrier Reef Islands. The catch: he will report back on his adventures (via weekly blog updates, photo diaries and video snippets).

And it gets better, Scott actually stands a good chance of making it into the final stages of selection and we all hope to see him blogging from the islands soon... using b2evolution of course!

So, please go vote for Scott and give him 5 stars now! (did you know you can actually vote once a day?)

We do not recommend to run this on production (although some of us do). This is ALPHA software, which means nothing you see is final and a lot of features are untested (not to mention, there a known bugs...)

If you are interested, it's a nice package to install locally in order to get an idea of some of the new features we've been implementing.

This is nowhere near final (there are already new features added to CVS since this release) but here's an quick rundown of what's changed so far:

Featured posts let you have the latest featured post on top of others with special formatting. (requires a skin that implements get_featured_Item() )

Intro posts let you content specific have intros on top of your category and tag pages. Same for the home page. (requires a skin that implements get_featured_Item() )

Photoblogging

It is now possible to select multiple images in the file manager and either

create multiple posts (1 per image)

or create 1 post with all images attached

Photo posts will be in draft status by default, allowing you to add titles and comments before publishing.

Photo index widget to show your latest photos in a blog sidebar.

Support of "cropped" thumbnails (the image will always fill the whole thumbnail area)

Thumbnail sizes can be configured in /conf/_advanced.php

Enhanced stats
& analytics

Complete hit log view

Faster queries

Goal tracking (TODO finish)

Keyphrase analytics

Performance

Page level caching. Can be enabled for each blog indivually (Advanced blog settings

Admin interface

Yabbarriffic drag & drop widget reordering (you can even move a widget from one container to another)

File manager now supports a shared directory (/media/shared/global/)

Enhanced dashboard.

Added usability shortcuts.

Improved iPhone compatibility.

Post editing

Added "Save & edit" button

Added 1 click "Publish NOW !" button

Enhanced handling of attached images & files.

Posts can be explicitely ordered by the use of the order field. This can be set on each post in expert edit mode (in the right column).

Post can now have custom fields. Custom fields can be defined for each blog under "Blog Settings > Features".

The issue date can now be set to an explicit date or just to "now" in which case it will be updated without the need to explicitely type in the current date/time.

Urltitles (slugs) can now be up to 200 chars long.

You can now specify a different title to be displayed in the <title> tag than the regular title of your post

Logging and stats

Session and Hit logging as well as debug info display are now done systematically at PHP shutdown. Therefore calls to $Hit->log() and debug_info() are no longer needed within skins. (It doesn't hurt to let them there either.)

Keyphrase logging

More SEO settings:

Customizable 404 pages

Customizable 404 responses (200, 301, 302, 303, 404 and 410 !)

Description and keywords META tags are inserted into the main page only to avoid duplicate content

Enhanced blog by email (tilman)

Reworked demo blog created at install

Blog properties

Longer blog name (up to 255 chars)

Autogeneration of category/chapter slugs(url names)

Comments

Whoever has permission to *edit* comments will now have extended permissions on *new* comments too, including posting <a> tags.

This was recorded via Skype a couple days ago, with Des being in Australia and me being in California. The sound quality turned out to be pretty good... but that doesn't help that I still hate listening to myself... (Is that my real voice??)

OK, it's already almost a week since I've been to Blog World Expo... and I thought I should post a quick recap...

First off, Blog World is a fun place to hang out at! I didn't take any pictures of the conference, the expo halls and the crowds but you can still check out this tweetup dinner video to get an idea of what some of us looked like on the last evening.

I have to say I'm very impressed by how twitter allows people to meet up at random places. That's how that after hours dinner took place after the end of the conference.

That said, the most interesting part for me was meeting with bloggers and getting feedback on the software!

Even if I wish I had met more b2evolution bloggers, I got a lot of feedback and interesting ideas! There is nothing like real people explaining what they really want to do with their blogs! Believe it or not, a live discussion makes your point way better than a cryptic forum post!

One feature I've worked on since I came back is page level caching. This is a direct result from talking with Nelson Guirado about performance issues on his host. While we cannot control the server load and speed of the hosting companies, one thing we can do is try to make b2evolution use less server resources per page, thus operate faster.

Page level caching goes a long way in that direction. Basically it caches your blog pages so that subsequent results will be served much faster and with significantly less queries to the database. This also drastically cuts down on the load time for your visitors. (You need to not be logged in to experience the cache effect).

Page caching is already available in CVS. It's also activated on b2evlution.net, including this blog you are reading right now. If you see anything odd, by all means, let me know.